Chakra Wisdom Guide: Essential Tools for Navigating Life's Complexity | Spiritual Growth & Self-Discovery

My first thought at seeing Ellen Tadd's "The Wisdom of the Chakras" was "oh dear, another book on the chakras," and I was leery of finding thin new age slogans about chakras as a kind of substitute for deep experiential knowing. I didn't need to worry. This is like no other book on the chakras that I have read, and I have read quite a few, from classics like Patanjali's "Yoga Aphorisms" and John Woodroffe's "Serpent Power" to the more contemporary study by Gopi Krishna in his riveting "Kundalini." I have also spent a great deal of time in yogic practice and have experienced the energetic openings associated with the chakras, so I have some knowledge as well as experience and, thus, a fairly well-developed BS detector when it comes to such books.Straight out: This is the best book on the chakras that I have read. It is clear that Tadd is NOT an academic, has not read and absorbed the scholarly literature on the chakras, and her language is disarmingly simple. This book is written by someone whose knowledge of chakras comes not through scholarship--she admits this in the Introduction--but by what she has seen and felt when she looks at people. What an idea! Have a clairvoyant, someone who actually sees etheric energies, describe what she sees. And Tadd is a very intelligent reporter who writes with subtlety and nuance. The value of this book for me is this. Although I have spent years experiencing these energies, I have never read anyone explain how each of the chakras is intimately related with all the others and how they are expressed in our affective states. What Tadd does remarkably well is to describe how the energy of these centers is felt in our daily life, in our emotional habits, habits that become so deeply ingrained that we do not even recognize them. In her description of the chakras--beginning from the crown and moving down--Tadd describes both the energetic experience of the chakra as well as its affective expression in our day to day life. It is this latter aspect, describing how our affective states are a reflection of the chakras, where Tadd is particularly gifted. Anyone who has meditated and been empowered by releasing these energies but finds that they still stumble in their endeavors and relationships should read this book. The language is so simple you might not initially recognize what you're reading. It is nothing less than a precise description of the energies of the chakras in our embodied life with helpful guidelines of how to integrate these energies in a way that ennobles us and benefits those around us.Gregory Shaw, author of "Theurgy and the Soul: the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus"